[fireball_blaze]

> Company researchers in 2019 set up a test account as a female Indian user and said they encountered a “nightmare” by merely following pages and groups recommended by Facebook’s algorithms.

> “The test user’s News Feed has become a near constant barrage of polarizing nationalist content, misinformation, and violence and gore,” they wrote. The video service Facebook Watch “seems to recommend a bunch of softcore porn.”

> After a suicide bombing killed dozens of Indian paramilitary officers, which India blamed on rival Pakistan, the account displayed drawings depicting beheadings and photos purporting to show a Muslim man’s severed torso. “I’ve seen more images of dead people in the past 3 weeks than I’ve seen in my entire life total,” one researcher wrote."

Facebook's default content consumption mode is to create a nightmarish experience. FB doesn't care as long as those ad clicks are working ok.

[Gunax]

It's an interesting experiment, but is that realistic? It sounds like the test account just followed the first n things recommended, then the next n, then the next. Sort of like the game where one clicks the first link in the wikipedia article and ends up at philosophy.

Any real user doesnt follow random links, but ones he/she is interested in.

Its not like facebook has a monopoly--users would leave if they were genuinely dissatisfied.